energy

Dominion Energy said Tuesday it sent letters to 226 land owners in North Carolina and two other states who have refused to allow the company to survey their land for the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline route.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the only international climate deal worth having is one that is “legally-binding”. In other words, a treaty which binds states to their commitments under international law.

As the United Nations prepares to hold one-day global summit on climate change, we speak to award-winning author Naomi Klein about her new book, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.” In the book, Klein details how our neoliberal economic system and our planetary system are now at war. With global emissions at an all-time high, Klein says radical action is needed. “We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis,” Klein writes. “We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe — and would benefit the vast majority — are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets.”

Anti-globalization author Naomi Klein says global investors should avoid Canadian natural-resource companies because of the growing risk that courts will award more control of land to aboriginal groups, threatening the viability of proposed development projects.

“Any resource investment in Canada right now should be treated as an uncertain investment,” Klein said in an interview yesterday during a social justice conference at the University of Ottawa. “More and more Canadians are realizing that indigenous land rights are the best legal tool to stop projects that are rejected by the majority of residents.”

A report released today by the chief science advisor to the United Kingdom energy agency on the carbon effects of burning wood biomass for energy will significantly change UK energy policy with significant implications for the rapidly expanding wood pellet industry in the southern United States. Already in response to the report, the U.K. Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC) announced that beginning next year, government subsidies will not be provided to wood biomass sources that do not meet a carbon reduction target.

In a state wracked with clashes over its explosive expansion of fracking, residents of Lafayette, Colorado just outside Boulder, have filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent the state of Colorado, Gov. John Hickenlooper and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) from taking away the town’s right to ban the practice.